A Garage Turned Backyard Bar

John and Danielle Kelly of Wyomissing never think twice about making the trek to their friendly neighborhood bar.

They know it won’t be a long walk, and there’s never the need to worry about driving to that favorite watering hole.

And, though it’s a fairly understated sort of space, there’s a hominess to it that harkens to the sort of place “where everyone knows your name.”

The Kellys’ neighborhood bar is about as close to home as anyone can get. In fact, it’s pretty much a hop, skip, and jump – across their compact back yard to their detached brick garage. Open the door and you’re walking into a place that’s warm, comfortable and filled with some of the nostalgia of John’s Reading roots.

It was back in 1995 that John, a dozen years past graduation from Reading High School, grew weary of life on the road as a large-loss storms claims adjuster for a major insurance company. Single and based in Colorado, John thought settling down in his hometown was so appealing that he made it a reality.

The “Green” Light

Though he grew up in his parents’ home in the 400 block of Windsor Street in the Centre Park Historic District, the thirty-something John wanted just a little – and he emphasizes “little” – patch of green that the row home environment did not offer.

So, this young man went a little bit west – a couple of miles west — to Wyomissing. A home on Garfield Avenue first caught his eye, but when he drove by a “for sale by owner” sign on Cleveland Avenue, he knew he had to knock on that door.

Two decades later, John is as in love with his circa-1922 brick semi-detached home as he was infatuated when he first saw it.

The owner of Kelly Painting Inc. (that firm with the white vans bearing the company logo and jovial paintbrush-wielding leprechaun), John had the know-how to tackle most of the projects. Most needed was a significant cosmetic rehabilitation, but the house had “good bones” thanks to the previous owner, who was an engineer.

So he got to work. He refinished floors, applied fresh paint to every room, redid the kitchen, pulled down a wall here and there, and rewired the electricity to modern standards. “I didn’t really have a plan; I just went from room to room and made my decisions,” says John.

But then he ran into a problem: he ran out of rooms.

Driving a Renovation

As the renovator’s luck would have it, there was the garage staring at him full-on and pretty much empty following his tough decision to sell his treasured 1970 Chevelle back in 2008. Though it cheered the young man who made it his first car, John was a bit bereft.

“That was the genesis of starting this thing,” he says of transitioning the old garage into a respectable bar.

The first order of business was demolition. The aged and water-stained drywall covering the walls and ceiling were removed, revealing the brick walls as well as the original wooden rafters and beams. The broken and piecemealed concrete floor was jack-hammered away. Taking its place is a poured patterned concrete floor that, once sealed, resembles natural slate.

A skilled carpenter, he set to work on restoring the original rafters, adding collar ties to strengthen the roof structure. The rafters and ceiling were painted dark brown and ceiling fans were installed to improve air circulation, both for summer cooling and winter heating. John also created cedar box beams “for show,” he says.

The wooden “accordion” garage doors, which open the space entirely to the outdoors, were retained as well as all the original windows. Inexpensive bamboo blinds installed over them not only provide essential privacy, but also soften the impact of the sun’s rays.

And while he initially worked on structure, John cobbled together an early incarnation of a bar.

His first “bar” was an aluminum patio bar with four chairs. An old sofa and chairs offered his buddies a place to sit and watch sports.

The Bar “Boys”

Those early bar buddies included some older gentlemen of the neighborhood. In the 22 years he’s been in his home, he’s seen a generational shift, with younger homeowners taking their places.

“When I first moved here, there were a bunch of us we called ‘the alley group,’” he says. “We’d all meet up here. Now I’m the old guy in the neighborhood.”

The generational shift has also extended to John’s bar décor. When Danielle came into his life a decade ago, she shared his passion for renovation and collections. Together, they’ve upgraded their bar to a one-of-a-kind place.

In the process of his painting and general carpentry work, John has been the recipient of cast-offs. His now-permanent bar is reflective of this.

The bar front is a large paneled quartersawn oak door set horizontally, around which the bar is constructed. Two handsome Doric-style wooden columns salvaged from an old building serve as sentinels for an old, large and ornately framed mirror; together, these elements compose the bar back.

A Happenstance of Style

Eclectic is certainly the word when it comes to the furnishings and objects that make the Kellys’ bar uniquely their own.

A “set” of purposefully mismatched bar stools of varying vintages invites visitors to cozy on up.

A porcelain statue of a kneeling woman shares a corner with a vintage Coca-Cola vending machine. “[the statue] is from the shop of a 95-year-old client,” says John. The gentleman’s wife refused to let him bring the comely stone figure home after he cleaned out his long-time place of business.

A circa-1920s-to-1930s metal table fan, purchased for $5 from the Centre Park Historic District Artifacts Bank, keeps both the porcelain lady and the visitors cool.

The Coca-Cola machine was salvaged from the bottling plant at Fifth and Bern streets in Reading. John worked there for a couple of years during his student days. He “gutted” the machines before they were sent off for scrap metal. “We sent about 30 or more to the scrap yards every year,” he recalls, groaning aloud about the classic machines he helped dissemble. His salvaged Coke machine dates to about the late 1960s. It still works perfectly, he says.

Into the Woods

Across the bar in another corner, an old tall cedar armoire is topped by a large flat-screen television – a necessity in any respectable establishment. Comfortable dark leather sofas provide the perfect seating for watching television or gazing at the fire crackling in the old wood stove that was once John’s grandfather’s. Stacks of logs are carefully piled near the stove, the only heating element in the building.

An eye-catching freeform pine coffee table with natural log legs, purchased by the couple at Knoebels Grove in Columbia County, serves as a fine place for setting down drinks among its polished knots and grain. It also does double-duty as an ottoman, as John and Danielle displayed.

Visitors in the cooler months can hang their jackets on a one-of-a-kind coat rack, an old ornately carved wood piano front fitted with hooks. That piece and a vintage Coca-Cola light were Danielle’s finds at Junk-to-Jazz in Shillington.

Old license plates speak to the lure of the road that John pretty much left behind him two decades ago. Indeed, the couple, together a decade but only married in February of 2016, considers their best vacations to be in a simple cabin they are renovating in a nearby county.

Perhaps what most brands this private bar are the artifacts from Reading’s brewing heydays. Danielle presented many of the signs and collectibles to John as Christmas gifts. Portrait-sized commercial wall hangings, a little sign that advertises “Sunny” for 10 cents, and a worn but still sturdy Sunshine Beer case make an unhurried glance around the room a bit like a walk through local history.

Like Mike’s

Lording over it all is a stuffed deer head, something clearly closer to John’s heart than Danielle’s, which seems intent on staring down a vintage Reading Beer lamp fixture.

The deer head sparked an observation during the early spring Berks County Living interview.

“I feel a bit like I’m in Mike’s Tavern,” remarked the writer. The comment hit a very positive nerve as the couple smiled in unison.

“We love Mike’s,” says Danielle, who works at Carpenter Technology Corp. in the Riverside section of Reading near Mike’s. Indeed, the small bar, located for nearly eight decades on the first floor of a row home in the 100 block of Exeter Street, is the neighborhood watering hole. It has become a true Reading icon and the influence for the set of Sweat, Lynn Nottage’s play about manufacturing workers’ challenges and urban conditions, which is now playing on Broadway.

“We were going for that feeling, the feeling of Mike’s,” says John.

Though the Kellys’ bar now has that trace of a connection to a Broadway production, the reality is that the bar is a down-home, comfortable place for friends and neighbors to gather.

In the blizzard of January 2016, much of the neighborhood – adults and children – gathered there for a potluck supper, served on the worktable that doubles as a buffet. They all enjoyed a night of games and some fun TV.

“We just opened it up to everyone,” says Danielle. “No one could go anywhere, so everyone brought a covered dish, a couple of beers, and we all had a good time.”

Down Time, Down Home

While the Kellys enjoy company, the couple relishes quiet hours after work in their own private backyard bar – replete with a patio area filled with flowers when the weather warms.

While there is always the opportunity to continue remodeling the bar, maybe even finally running a water line to the garage at some point, the Kellys are in no rush, nor do they want their guests to be.

John smiles as he looks around his little slice of Centre Park reconfigured to a Wyomissing address. And among those important reminders of his Reading childhood are the cement alleys that run behind the houses in his neighborhood.

“In town, those alleys were our playgrounds, and we were out there all day,” he says. “I love to hear the sounds of people in our alleys, especially the kids playing there. It really seems like being home.”